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@Rachel Lynne - your comment slots you right into the group of parasites Mr. Schneider so aptly denounced here. Congratulations on continuing to avoid addressing the real issue(s). Access to (or not) semi-automatic weapons had no factual link to how many children would have been killed. One child is too many, and your '...a couple might have been shot anyway" comment clearly demonstrates your inability to address the root of the problem.

Mature people recognize that with rights come responsibilities, and such is the case with every part of the Bill of Rights. If the gun lovers truly cared about our security, they would call for the ban of these military style assault weapons in the first place. But this proves they really care about objects, not people.

Rachel Lynne - Yesterday at 12:56 PM:"Without access to semi-automatic weapons, 20 children would not be dead, nor would 6 teachers/staff."******************Rachel, for once try and be a little realistic. First, semi-automatic weapons will never be banned. However, just for the sake of argument let's say that they are all banned tomorrow. So now the nut-jobs of the world are forced to used bolt-action rifles when they go on a killing spree. You're right a bolt-action rifle would have resulted in less fatalities. So now the question becomes: how many dead people would you consider to be an acceptable number?

Many of our laws are knee jerk reactions poorly thought out and later require much rethinking. It is the spirit of America to legislate it in the moment.

Both Democrats and Republicans do this. Welfare reform need much correction and was implemented to respond to foodstamp queens. Truth in sentencing was passed without any thought to how to pay for it and where to house all the inmates. Judges had to make corrections. To be frank the Democrats did their share of lets legislate it quick.

Its going to take get past who to blame. A better discussion. Maybe we should start over from the beginning to replace Brady with something more realistic. The Democrats just exploited the value of Brady to make everything the felony. Brady bill should of only applied to violent felons most of which never would of been released anyway. To give it value more crimes were made into the felony so today people that are not violent loose their rights for the sins of violent felons.

Ironton - Yesterday at 2:41 PM:"Christian Schneider, who riles up people for a living, is riled up about people getting riled up."***************Here's an idea. Don't read his blog and you won't get riled up.

"American citizens took to social media en masse to push whatever precooked political issues they could attach to the tragedy."

My favorite example of irony were the comments that first offered the usual cliches about the gun being a blameless, inanimate, aw heck, even sympathetic figure victimized by knee-jerk liberals -- and then in the next sentence pegged the cause of the attack squarely on those violent video games.

I also avoided social commentary on the day of the event, though thankfully I did not comment on doing so.

But I have not remained silent, and in defense of all the people I have seen offer some remarkably thoughtful and humble commentary after this singularly awful tragedy, I ask Christian to consider this: we've seen enough of these kinds of events that we've got a pretty good idea already what the broad strokes are. We are reasonable to expect that here we'll have a seriously weird, evidently dysfunctional male use firearms near the current state of the art (and judging by the body count, with high-capacity magazines) to slaughter strangers chosen for obscure reasons that only make sense to -- if anyone -- the shooter himself.

Every attack is different, and it is imperative that we learn something from each one, if we are to protect and defend the public from future incidents. In that regard, it absolutely does make sense to hedge about "waiting for all the facts to come in."

But, just as importantly, there are common features to these attacks that should inform a more global response. I admit that they are challenging to pin down; just shooting a blunderbuss at crazy people or "assault weapons" is not going to have much of an effect. However, insisting on silence -- and for how long? -- is not the way to develop better policy.

And what was Holder/Obama's reasons for giving thousands of assault rifles to known killers, a la "Fast & Furious"? Did they really think that no innocent people would be killed? [how quickly the left forgets].

"Perhaps sensing what forever being tied to such a momentous occasion could do to further her career, Keene cradled Lincoln's head in her hands, making sure to wipe some of his blood on her dress for posterity."

I s'pose you take Bill O'Reilly's view on just about anything as Gospel truth.

Our teachers are asked to solve all of the socioeconomic problems of contemporary society flooding into our schools, while at the same time successfully teaching their students to some meaningless standardized test.

And if that was not enough - We are now going to ask them to be an integral part of an well armed first-response team to address an "Active Shooter" situation in their school.

Wow - some brilliant thinking coming out of the republican party these days.

So, exactly how much is the Bradley Foundation paying these genii for such brilliance?

OK Einstein - You want to equate a 1st grade teacher slapping a band-aid on a scuffed-up knee with being fully qualified to effectively use an assault weapon to engage an "active shooter" in order to protect her class from a homicidal maniac?

Why don't you go and peddle your paranoid gun-crazy BS somewhere else - because the majority of American don't want to live in your twisted psychotic little world.

In fact you could try selling it to the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. I hear the Bradley Foundation is paying BIG BUCKS for thinkers like you.